Polygon has broken $100 million in NFT trading volume in January 2024, up more than 50% compared to December 2023 and higher than any month during 2023, when February noted the highest number of NFT sales just above $69 million.
Find Satoshi Lab’s launch of social strategy game Gas Hero in early January accounts for the vast majority of the recent uptick. With its eight different NFT collections, the game’s NFT sales has reached just over $91 million over the last 30 days, as per data from Cryptoslam.
The trading volume of each collection is as follows:
- Gas Hero Common Heroes, $38 million
- Gas Hero Items, $15 million
- Gas Hero Coupon, $14 million
- Gas Hero Weapon, $13 million
- Gas Hero Fragments, $4 million
- Gas Hero Badge, $3 million
- Gas Hero Genesis Heroes, $2 million
- Gas Hero Pets, $2 million
Achieving this extent of sales volume is partly down to the general change of sentiment in the web3 gaming industry, which was struggling for most of 2023. However, it also showcases the power of Gas Hero’s NFT strategy and the commitment of its community.
Not any developer could onboard over 10,000 players to an NFT-gated, and token-rewarded game, within a month after launch, where the required asset originally had a $600 floor price, although this has dropped to $100.
Find Satoshi Lab has built up a level of reputation with its debut move-to-earn experience STEPN, which has reached over 1 million downloads on the app stores. In comparison, hero-themed strategy game Gas Hero is only available on browser for users owning a Gas Hero NFT. Emphasising their differences further is the choice of ecosystem, with STEPN on Solana while Gas Hero is deployed on Polygon.
Whether the strategy will be sustainable in the long term unless the NFT gating is removed remains to be seen.
More generally, however, Polygon Labs co-founder Sandeep Nailwal sees the appetite for Gas Hero as a sign of the dawn of web3 gaming, commenting in an interview with The Block, “The popularity of Gas Hero is indicative of the present appetite for web3 gaming”.
He adds that “The game’s wide appeal, as illustrated by such early success, is a positive sign of the trajectory our ecosystem is heading in, as we witness a new type of gamer enter into the web3 sphere.”